Ken Church, CEO, nScrypt

Did you know our galaxy has around 400 billion stars? Yet the most you'll ever see with the naked eye is 2,000. Discovering what's happening based on what you can see may therefore be misleading, which is also the case when testing PCB assemblies.

Multi-layer boards can have thousands of solder joints hidden beneath complex packages, which is why XJTAG developed products to check those inaccessible connections for faults such as opens or shorts.

2020 marks thirty years since JTAG boundary scan became the IEEE Standard on which XJTAG's range of test, debug and programming tools are based. Since the standard’s publication, IC complexity has increased dramatically: whereas BGAs had fewer than 250 balls in 1990, one processor launched in 2019 boasted 3,325. With PCB area also shrinking, routing between such devices means double-digit layer boards are becoming normal.

This increasing complexity will continue to fuel demand for easy-to-use boundary scan tools in 2020 as companies seek a quick and efficient method to check and programme their boards.

To see boundary scan working on your own board, request a free trial. XJTAG is giving away $1m of product to celebrate the IEEE 1149.1 anniversary—see www.xjtag.com/giveaway.